Bedtime Stories
by Exploded Pen
Summary: Jeannie stared at the calendar on the kitchen wall, her finger gently tapping the marked date. Five years. Had it really been that long? God, how the world changed.'


**Title:** Bedtime Stories  
**Rating: **PG  
**Spoilers:** Everything up to and including The Kindred part 2  
**Word Count: **1710  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Stargate Atlantis, I don't own anything!  
**Authors Note:** This was written for the family challenge over on sgaflashic at livejournal and is the sequel (of sorts) to Not Dead Yet, however you don't necessarily have to have read that to understand this.

Jeannie stared at the calendar on the kitchen wall, her finger gently tapping the marked date. Five years. Had it really been that long? God, how the world changed. She still half expected him to turn up at the front door like last time, looking as if she was supposed to instantly forget and forgive his absence from her life.

"I've put Davey to bed," said Kaleb coming into the kitchen. "Although he wants you to go up too, and Maddie – " He paused mid sentence. "Everything ok?"

Jeannie quickly turned from the calendar and nodded. "I'm fine."

Kaleb frowned, his gaze flickering to the calendar, suddenly his face cleared. "God, it is that time already?" He moved to embrace her. "Are you ok?" he asked softly, wrapping his arms tightly around her.

"It's been five years," she whispered, laying her head against his shoulder. "I should be used to it by now. It's not like he was around at all before then." She pulled away from him and forced a smile onto her face. "I'll go up to see Davey." She pushed past him before he could say another word, passing through the living room, where Madison was busy drawing, and into the hallway hurrying up the staircase with perhaps more haste than the situation warranted.

She stepped into her son's room. Davey's head snapped across to look at her guiltily, from his position perched on top of his duvet. "I thought Daddy put you to bed."

He gave her a beaming grin, his mousey brown hair sticking up in all directions. "I'm in bed."

"That's not what I meant," she crossed the room and got her son nestled safely once more beneath his duvet, smoothing out the wrinkles on the duvet cover.

"Daddy said I could have a story," he said, giving her a wide eyed innocent look.

Jeannie smiled a proper smile this time. "Then why didn't Daddy tell you a story?"

"Because I wanted to hear more about the space explorers again," Davey told her, rolling his eyes like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Daddy doesn't know that one."

Jeannie's heart sank. "Not tonight, Davey, wouldn't you rather hear the one about the wizards? I told you about the space explorers last week, there's not really anything left to tell."

He pouted and shook his head. "I wanna hear about the space explorers, mommy," He insisted."Please!"

Jeannie briefly closed her eyes as Davey repeated "Please!" at her for a few minutes. It was their usual game, he would ask for a story and if she refused he'd say please till she grinned and gave in. But tonight it was grating on her nerves.

A small hand patted hers. "Mommy?" She opened her eyes to see Davey frowning at her worriedly.

She forced a smile. "You've heard all the stories I know about the space explorer's, honey." All the stories she knew of her brother's escapades, altered enough to be child friendly, told to her children over countless nights, in an attempt on her part to stop her from forgetting Rodney, to remind herself he was still out there somewhere. Stories drawn from the mission reports held at the SGC, mission reports she had sneaked a look at whilst helping them out with projects over the past half decade.

But now...it had been five years, Rodney had been officially listed as dead for the past three, it was time to stop hoping he would come back. The brother who was never around anyway. It had been five years. There had been a war with the Ori, the existence of the Stargate had been revealed to the world, and she'd given birth to her son early, in the middle of one of the labs at the SGC. It had been five years.

Davey blinked up at her. "But what happened to everybody? Did they save the sleeping Doctor?" He looked worried, clenching and unclenching his hands nervously. "Didn't the Colonel and his team save everyone?

"I don't know, sweetie," she said quietly. "The Colonel and his team disappeared." She brushed his unruly hair out of his face.

"What happened?" he asked her, his eyes wide. "Did the monsters get them?"

She tucked his hands beneath his duvet. "Don't want you to get cold hands," she said lightly.

He frowned. "Mommy, what happened?" Big blue eyes stared at her imploringly.

Jeannie inhaled sharply. "There was an accident in the base." A virus, running rampantly through the systems causing havoc in an instant, the reports said, it infected all the systems before anyone could even work out what was happening and finally shut down the stargate so no one could dial in or out. "Someone did something to the computers so nothing would work."

Davey's mouth dropped open. "Couldn't the Scientist fix it?"

"The scientist wasn't there," she told him. "He had been sent out on a mission with his team." She wondered, not for the first time, if Rodney could have made a difference had he been there.

Davey pulled his hands back out from beneath the duvet and wriggled about to get more comfortable. "Who did it? The Robots?"

"They didn't know, sweetie."

"I bet it was the Robots," said Davey with absolute conviction. "So how did they get the stargate to work again?"

"They didn't," said Jeannie, letting her gaze drift. "They managed to fix all the important systems, but they couldn't get the stargate to work again." Countless weeks of frenetic work, all under threat of another possible attack, knowing there was about sixty personnel stranded offworld, either on the Alpha site or on trading missions. "Eventually a space ship was sent to get them." Yeah, after two months of no news the SGC managed to spare one ship from the fight with the Ori to bring the Atlantis personnel home. There was no guarantee of that ship even making it back without being destroyed by the Ori, the Wraith or the Replicators.

"Because no one gets left behind," said Davey smiling. "So the Space ship saved them?"

Jeannie nodded. "The Space Ship came and took them all on board." Of course the number of personnel had been dramatically reduced, some being lost due to equipment malfunction when the virus first hit the systems, others falling prey to a broken Ancient weapon that took them to be wraith, not to mention the sixty or so people lost offworld. "They had still been trying to fix the stargate but no matter what they tried it just wouldn't work. There was no time to stay round and wait – "

"Because of the war?" Davey interrupted, gazing at her in wide-eyed interest. "They had to come back and beat the bad guys here."

"That's right," Jeannie tried not to shudder at the memory of the Ori war. "They piled everything important onto the space ship and left the base for the last time."

"Even the sleeping Doctor?"

Jeannie nodded. "Even the sleeping Doctor. They managed to find a cure for him, so they woke him up." She smiled. "He was a bit shaky at first but got much better as time went by."

"What about everybody offworld?"

We abandoned them, left them to fend for themselves because it was the only option available to us when everything went to hell here on Earth. Help save billions of people, or stay and use the ship to search for sixty odd people who might not even be alive. Jeannie swallowed. "There was no way to go look for them, Davey. Everybody had to come back," she paused, "and beat the bad guys."

Davey looked troubled. "But you said the Colonel always said no one gets left behind." He clutched hold of his duvet.

"The Colonel wouldn't have wanted the space ship to stay behind when all the people on Earth needed the space ship to protect them," said Jeannie gently.

Davey took a moment to process this. "So what happened to the Colonel and his team? Did they go stay with the Warrior Lady's people?"

I don't know, maybe, I wish they did, I hope they're still alive, I hope the wraith didn't suck the life from them, I hope the replicators didn't destroy their minds, I hope starvation and illness didn't strike them. I hope they're ok. Jeannie pasted a smile on her face. "Maybe. Nobody knows what happened to the Colonel and his team."

Davey grinned brightly. "I bet he kept fighting the monsters! He wouldn't let them hurt the people, would he mommy? And I bet the scientist turned off those stupid robots! Besides the Warrior Lady and the Runner know all about camping about stuff. I bet they're still fightin' the bad guys!"

"You think?" Jeannie asked, watching as Davey stopped clutching his duvet and yawned.

"Yup, it's obvious," Davey rubbed his eyes.

Jeannie stared at him. "And why is that?" she asked gently.

"The good guys always win," he said nodding emphatically. "I bet the Scientist and the Colonel have already saved the galaxy!" He beamed. "When I grow up I'm gonna go find 'em, mommy."

"Oh you are, are you?" Her heart sank. He's four, he's only four, he doesn't know what he wants, he's not going to end up like Rodney.

Davey yawned. "Yup, I'm gonna take a big ship and go see the stars and then go find the people left behind." He snuggled down into his duvet. "'Cause the Colonel says no one gets left behind."

Jeannie felt a lump come up in her throat. "Time to sleep now, Davey." She leant over and kissed his forehead. "Goodnight."

She switched off the bedside lamp and walked to the door. Kaleb was waiting for her outside, leaning against the wall.

"You been there the whole time?" she asked quietly, shutting Davey's door behind her.

Kaleb smiled. "You tell the best stories."

Jeannie put her arms round him and sighed as he pulled her close. "Because they aren't stories," she whispered.

Kaleb kissed the top of her head.

It had been five years. Rodney had been declared officially dead for three.

Jeannie pushed aside her earlier melancholy.

"He's still alive, Kaleb, he's still out there somewhere, all of them are."

**Reviews are most welcome :)**


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